


folklore

by unthank



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Getting Together, Kitsunetsuki, M/M, Shinto, it's mostly atsumu's perceptions of himself and kita, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26016241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unthank/pseuds/unthank
Summary: the sky of your lips collide with the earth of mine
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	folklore

**Author's Note:**

> [i wrote this while listening to folklore by taylor swift](https://open.spotify.com/album/1pzvBxYgT6OVwJLtHkrdQK?si=AB1fdBhTSoa3u8QA479odQ)
> 
> cw: unreality, blood mentions

It began with a kiss outside the _konbini_ near school.

It started with him saying his name, quiet and barely there. The whole world had hushed for them, cutting the storm and placing them in the eye. There was a hand on his chest, an ice cream left to melt, and the cicadas hushed themselves.

He kissed him once. Then he kissed him twice. He kissed him with all certainty that he knew only he could have; he kissed him with a surety in himself that he knew he didn’t have.

It ended with him smiling, turning away from the questions he had for him.

The eye of the storm moved on from them, then, pushing them into the rain of their everyday.

Atsumu knew he had faults, that he rubbed people up the wrong way and ground against his teammates like sandpaper. It wasn’t as bad as middle school, no, but it wasn’t perfect.

He didn’t particularly mind, not really. He could deal with people not liking him, as long as he still reached the very top, could still eat his goals like they were his last meals of each life he lived. He had a hunger that couldn’t be sated - he wanted to find a way to fill his stomach.

What he did mind was the idea and prevailing theory that Osamu was the _good_ twin, that he was the nice twin. (Not that he told anyone this. Atsumu didn’t talk about what he felt.)

Where Atsumu was like a wild fox - vicious and bloodthirsty, made to hunt for the kill - he knew Osamu was calmer, but not nicer, not at all. His twin stalked their shared prey; he followed him, let him guide him, and took their hunt out with a quiet precision. Far cleaner than the mauled remains Atsumu felt he always left behind. _But they were the same, you see, they’ve always been the same, they’re predators living among mortal men._

There was one person who saw the wild fox in both of them.

Kita Shinsuke lived his life in the most mortal way possible - though Atsumu was sure he was lying, no one like Kita could be born in the grey-green earth. He couldn’t imagine him being birthed, squalling and covered in the blood of his mother’s love, pushed from her body and bathed by ordinary hands.

No, Atsumu was sure that Kita was given to his granny as a gift from the gods.

He perceived him in a way that Atsumu wasn’t used to. He saw past his frothing growls and handed him _umeboshi_ , gave him a note and told him to take care, to look after himself. Everything was proper with Kita. He left no room for mistakes and did everything which so much proficiency that it charmed the second years - fox-gold eyes watching his every move in their curious presence.

 _It was a spell, definitely, he’d cast a spell over them._ Atsumu was fascinated by him; and if he had ears, if he had the foxlike appearance to fit his soul, he knew he’d constantly seem alert, aware of his senior’s cool presence.

Atsumu thought he had a handle on his boy who came from the gods. He knew, he thought, that he could smell out exactly what he’d do next.

They didn’t talk about the kiss, as much as Atsumu wanted to.

He half wondered if it was a dream, that something inside him conjured up an undercooked dream of his _senpai_ pressing warm lips against his. _Once, twice_. He thought maybe the gods had given him this memory. That maybe Kita, in all his understated godhood had planted it in his usually wild thoughts.

Atsumu told his twin, said he thought it must’ve been a dream - since why would he be with Kita-san? Why would Kita-san, a non-mortal - give his love to someone like him? Osamu didn’t reply, not at first. Instead, he sat within his quietness, and Atsumu felt seen in a way that only came from someone who’d once been half of him.

“Yer thinkin’ too much,” is all his twin said.

He was probably right - Atsumu knew he was right. He thought too much or not at all, and each way ate him up until he could feel that parasite burning him. This was a forest fire that burned in his limbs. The more he ran the faster it caught up with him, the quicker it licked his bones and devoured him in a hunger that rivalled his own.

But Atsumu was a boy where Kita was a god, and he didn’t have to follow the same rules.

He’d never been alone for a day in his life, having joined Osamu only thirteen minutes after the other was born.

So why, _why_ , was he going to be alone now?

Their teeth were in each other, growls and snarls ripping out of their chests in a fierce attempt to prove the other was strongest. He was a wild, wild fox - a wild thing desperate to keep everything the same, to keep his pack and territory a safe, reliable environment to hunt and eat in.

He wasn’t a fox from the gods. He came from the earth covered in blood and now, just right now, he’s sure he’s going to leave it in just the same way.

And if he was from the gods, he’d be able to turn his boy-form into a fox-form and run as far away as possible from the fires that continued to consume him.

“Atsumu.”

Kita’s voice was quiet, like it always was. But his voice cut through their fight like a _tantō_ , raised fists paused and anger choking in their throats. They daren’t fight in front of him, they daren’t disappoint the one person they promised to make proud. For a moment, looking at his senior, Atsumu is certain he can see his nine white tails, fanned behind him like a warning of who he really was.

But he doesn’t do anything violent, he doesn’t fall into the myth that Atsumu believes in. Instead, he cupped his jaw, as if he could wipe away the years of bloodshed and recent tears.

“Come back to me, Atsumu.”

The fires in his limbs began to hush.

It was just them both in the gymnasium, alone in the cracked silence left behind by that altercation.

Osamu had left last, hand intertwined with Suna’s when he thought no one was looking. But Atsumu saw, he noticed - he wondered how he’d never seen it before. _Perhaps fire and fang had engulfed his twin in the way it drowned him._

“Do ya think the gods are watchin’ us?” Kita said, sitting next to Atsumu, fingers nearly touching.

“‘Course they are,” Atsumu replied, more a boy than anything else. “What else do they gotta do?”

He didn’t feel like a wild fox now. His fangs were gone and no forest fires burned in legs and stomach - and he wasn’t hungry for the everything in his path. Beside him was Kita-san, calm and collected Kita-san, who told him to come back to him like he was the one who’d been with the gods instead.

“Ya ain’t really a god, are ya?” He asked.

Kita smiled, laced their fingers together, “I ain’t a god the same way ya ain’t really a fox.”

Wasn’t he a fox? He was sure he was, but his heart beat in his chest and his legs jumped and ran like a real boy would.

“I want to know ya, Kita-san.”

“Then know me.”

It began again with a kiss in the middle of a sunset, inside a gymnasium they called their second home.

He wasn’t a fox and he wasn’t a god; the eye of the storm had settled around them again, and this is where he wanted to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> this was mostly written in a daze while listening to folklore and reading about kitsunetsuki. my take on kitsunetsuki is more to do with mental health (such as the psychiatric diagnosis), than it being a physical reality and towards the end of this short fic, atsumu begins to heal 
> 
> i think this is mostly a character study on atsumu and how your own mental health can effect your perception of others.
> 
> twitter @[kuguken](https://twitter.com/kuguken)


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